Venice, Italy: Oct. 12-15

Venice: Wednesday Oct. 12, 2005

The day started early and just kept going. A 6:00 am wake up call started the fiasco. Brian had a 6:00 pm board call he had to attend from Venice and the current schedule would put us into the city around 2:00. Lots of time…. Well we managed to drag ourselves out of bed, get the kids up and dressed and then with packs on negotiate the house out to the courtyard. It was dark. Very dark, and we had a narrow and steep trail to negotiate to get to the train station.

Armed with a flashlight and Brian carrying Sierra’s bag along with his own we took it slow and nobody fell off the mountain. We caught the train to Genoa which arrived 2-3 minutes late. We had 20 minutes to make our connection in Genoa and weren’t too worried because trains were supposed to run every hour.

Somehow we arrived in Genoa 30 minutes late. How we lost time is a mystery. After a check at the ticket office we found that the train schedules had changed recently and we would have to wait not 1 but 2 hours. “Sorry, Nothing sooner”.

Now on the train to Milano, we had a 20 minute window to make our connection to Venice. This time we left 10 minutes late and arrived in Milano 40 minutes late. Our buffer was slowly eroding, and everything we had heard about the Italian train system seemed to be hitting us in one day.

In Milano we had a 40 minute wait. Not having eaten breakfast or lunch yet Debbie was getting antsy. Brian just wanted to get to Venice. Finding the right train and track Debbie and Brian set off in different directions. Brian to find out if reservations were required, Debbie for food. Brian discovered that “Signore, you must to board now if you wish a seat”. With our tickets we all have to board at the same time and Debbie was shopping! By the time she showed up the family was already marching down the track ready to abandon her. We managed to board and crammed into a car with another gentleman who must have been thrilled with the Pizza and chips and munching kids that he was going to be sharing the cabin with for the next 3 hours. Brian refused to eat anything either on principle or out of stubbornness. However everyone else was very happy.

This time we managed to leave right on schedule yet despite that we arrived in Venice an additional 30 minutes late. It was now 6:00 we had burned through our 4 hour buffer for Brian’s call in 3 train rides. And now things really got fun.

First order of business was to phone the office and tell them Brian would be late on the call, and then phone the apartment managers and arrange for them to meet us at a designated spot near the apartment. At this point we find out that the cell phone had run out of charges and we needed to purchase a new vodaphone calling card to recharge it. Too bad there are no stores around the train station.

Quickly we explore option 2. Use a pay phone. After finding a pay phone we discover the Venice phones only take phone cards, not change. So now we find a store in the train station that sells domestic phone cards. 5 Euros later we can now at least make our call to the apartment manager. We get directions to the meeting spot via the Vaporetto (the public water bus). We catch number 86 and depart 5 minutes later at the Rialto Bridge. It only cost us $20 Euro. Some deal!! We end up waiting 30 minutes for the apartment manager to show and we hike off over the bridge to the apartment. It looks like a great apartment and has everything we wanted except a phone.

Family settled and an hour and a bit late for the call, Brian now sets out to find an internet café. Even without the phone line in the apartment, he can still make the call via the internet. He just needs a place to plug in his laptop. Ten minutes later he finds one, only to be told that due to the recent anti-terrorism laws, you can no longer plug private machines into Internet Cafés in Venice. Now we are starting to get worried.

It’s now getting very late and in desperation, Brian purchases two international calling cards from a street vendor. At least he can call and listen for a while. As he places the call, he is informed by the operator in English that the Pin numbers on the cards are no longer valid. The day just keeps getting longer. Returning to the vendor he had purchased the cards from Brian discovered that the guy had closed up for the night. By this time it is 8:45. Brian tries one last ditch effort and begins wandering the streets looking for a wireless connection for the laptop. A nearby hotel does have one but it was going to cost 300 Euro or the price of a room for the night to access it. By this time Brian gives up and heads back to the apartment. Welcome to Venezia! At least sleep will be good….

Venice : Thursday October 13, 2005

Sleep was short. We now have an in depth knowledge of the market in the San Polo district and how it works.

At 4:45, the workers at the fish store located just below the apartment arrive and open up the large metal garage doors that separate their shop from the street. At 5:00 am they begin to assemble the tables that hold all their fish. They then have a creative shouting match for the next 15 minutes to see who can shout at each other in Italian the loudest. All very interesting …. At around 5:15 am the fish vendor arrives pulling a very large cart filled with fish and a very vocal negotiation proceeds as the shop owner negotiates the prices for his daily shop purchases. This isn’t too bad, as it only lasts for 20 minutes or so and then the fish are off-loaded into the shop. Similar exchanges are occurring at all the nearby shops, making for a very active morning. At around 5:35 things really get going. The freshly caught fish now have to be prepared and the shop owner and his assistants begin gutting and filleting the fish. Now the shouting is interspersed with the CHOP, CHOP as the heads of a hundred or so fish are taken off and the SCRAPE, SCRAPE as they are de-scaled. This only lasts for 90 minutes or so, and it’s hardly noticeable because by now you are totally caught up in the conversations. While we don’t speak Italian we can tell you that Franco is an “imbecile!” and Slova’s soccer team couldn’t kick a ball if they had to. This routine happens day in and day out; everyday till about 2:00 when they shut things down for the day. At least they were very diligent about cleaning things up because despite living above a fish shop there was virtually no smell at all.

By the time 8:00 rolls around we are up and ready for breakfast. By 8:30 we are out the door en route to the Piazza di San Marco or St. Mark’s Square. The Square is world famous and was called the “Drawing Room of Europe” by Napoleon. It hosts the Basilica (with initial construction in 1094) and the large palace of the Doges next to it.

So people may want to know what you find in St. Mark’s Square at 8:30 in the morning. The answer is pigeons, and not just any pigeons but voraciously hungry pigeons. For 1 Euro apiece, the kids purchased a bag of seed and were buried under thousands of birds. It will be a long time before we forget the sight of Brennan running around with 5-10 birds parked on his head and shoulders trying to escape, or Sierra crying out that she can’t move because the birds are attacking her and they are 2 layers deep around her feet.

Unfortunately if you ask the kids what they remember most I am sure they will say the pigeons. The Basilica with its amazing tile mosaics in the floor and gold mosaics across the 8 domes and walls came in a distant second.

After a bunch of pictures we decided to tour the Palace of the Doges. Between the 10 th and 15 th century, Venice had developed a very sophisticated form of republican government and became a world sea power. Their head of state, the Doges was elected from their senate and represented the head of state. The palace came with all the associated grand rooms, and lots of gold gilt. It also had one of the best collections of ancient weapons and globes we had seen yet. Interestingly the palace reminded us of the Castle in Rhodos we had seen. This made sense as the Venetians played a large role in the Crusades and in Rhodos.

We headed back over several bridges to the apartment for a quick lunch and then it was off again to find an internet café so we could at least send out emails. Brian had wanted to explore the larger island in more depth and Debbie and the kids wanted to shop for some of the Carnivale masks that Venice is famous for. Over the next 4 hours of walking we managed to get lost a dozen times, purchase masks for Brennan, Debbie, and Brian and visit some 30 other shops trying to find the “perfect” mask for Sierra. Her standards weren’t too, too high. She knew what she wanted.

It had to be pretty. It had to be pink. It couldn’t resemble any animal, clown, jester, or magician. Finally we found the perfect mask only 100 yards from the apartment. Now all we had to do was arrange to get them packed and shipped off to Canada. This time however we didn’t have to do any diving into trash bins for boxes, the stores actually provided them.

Despite the walking, it had been a good afternoon. We learned a lot about the different masks from the artists we purchased them from. We got our emails out and our accommodations for Austria, Hungary, and Romania were settled as well.

Venice is an exceptionally expensive city for eating out in so we elected to do the apartment thing and settled for rice and sausages. This would be the first day in the last 17 days that we hadn’t had pasta of some sort. Also now that we knew the market schedule we knew we had to go to bed early if we wanted to have any hope of functioning the next day.( NEXT PAGE )